Rennes-les-Bains
10 March 2008
In the film industry, there is an enormous focus on the hero or heroine. They are often identified by a sequence of questions. Who is it? What do they want? Why do they want it? Why can't they have it? What will they do to get it?
I suppose there are novelists who have this same overarching desire to discover and depict their central protagonists. Perhaps if that is the way you see your story first, it's easier to find your way into the conflict and the intrigue. But not for me.
The more I think about what I do, the more I realise that I start and finish with landscape. The location is present in my mind's eye before a single character steps into the shot. In fact, the panorama is the thing that gives me my first inkling of the tone of the tale, the atmosphere of the narration, the quality of the narrative voice.
Sepulchre is, in a sense, a ghost story. What better location for spirits to inhabit than an old, ruined house whose fallen stones conceal a mystery? Were they washed away by the dreaful flood that swept through the village? Or was the place simply swallowed up by the forest - 'there is no way through the woods' ... ?
Rennes-les-Bains isn't the first village I have researched with a view to setting a story there. But here, in this place, everything came together.
There was the strangely compelling history of the salt river, rising so many miles from the sea, so far above sea level, collecting its briny minerals from salt deposits laid down in the mountains over geological time. Stand amidst the running water, on rocks polished by the stream, and look up to the thermal spa and the old stone bridge ...
There was the connection with another set of tales - oddly unconvincing but popular - about a priest, hidden parchments and unexplained wealth, just a morning's walk across country. And this against a background that I discovered in winter, windswept and abandoned.
Greg and I taught a weekend class at West Dean College last weekend with one of our regular partners, Jason Goodwin. The course focused on Plot & Character.
The further we went, the more I looked forward to the one we are doing at the end of March on Location, Dialogue & Revision!
That's
the view from the Sepulchre.
